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CHAPTER START---
"Hmm," Horizon groans as he wakes up, shaking his head and looking around at the hospital room he was in.
He'd fallen asleep sitting on a chair beside Yagi's bed.
Glancing over at the man he sees him still completely blacked out in the bed, now wearing a hospital gown and laying under a blanket, with only a few machines connected to monitor him.
And his left arm was now properly healed just enough to seal off the stump.
Looking to his left Horizon sees the windows currently blocked by the blinds, for security and privacy.
He takes out his phone to see hundreds of unread messages and a few notifications, alerting him that his name was used in major news articles.
"5 AM," he mutters while getting up. Stretching his limbs and cracking his neck, the soreness in his body still lingering.'Life Force is a pain in the ass, but Energy Saver is nice, one hour of sleep after being so tired after that operation and I'm back to full. Plus I'm not even that hungry, so that part of the Quirk is just great.
The best part is probably that I can sleep on command...Now I just need to figure out how to spend all this extra time and energy...'
Looking back down at Yagi, Horizon just shakes his head. Hoping he didn't make a mistake saving him instead of just letting him die like a hero, like he knew All Might most likely wanted.
Just imagining the hell his life would be now, forced onto the sidelines while everyone else has to protect him.
'This had better get me the massive boost in public perception I'm hoping for...' Horizon thinks as he begins walking to the door.
Opening the door and stepping out of the room he enters the well-lit hallway, immediately greeted by a row of police officers in riot gear, ready to act as a last line of defense in case the villains got inside somehow.
Looking to the end of the hall he sees a vending machine and immediately makes a beeline toward it, ignoring all the officers entirely to get himself a snack.
Settling for a bag of chips and a bottle of water, he sees all his change in the machine, enough to buy nearly two dozen more items...
"Hey," he quietly signals the officer's standing guard, "I left money in this thing if you guys want a coffee or something..." and he walks away before the men can even act on what he said.
Making his way to the main desk on this floor he decides exactly how he'll be spending his time here.
'Well if I'm in this place until Yagi wakes up I should at least get some use out of it. Central Hospital has an entire research wing and the most diverse Quirk selection in terms of people I can get hands-on with.
This is a perfect place to get some work done, and healing people always looks oh so 'heroic', I'll just help some people and get myself ahead, win-win...'
Arriving at the main desk on this floor he sees a few nurses filing paperwork, busy as always, and quietly approaches them.
"Hi there," they all pause and look up, eyes going wide as they notice who is talking to them.
"Uh...how can I help you?" the woman asks politely, partly star-struck and somewhat fearing the worst, that he was here to deliver bad news about All Might.
"Yeah, I need access to the list of current patients."
"Sorry but, that's for staff access only, you'll need special permission before I give you that."
"Mhm," Horizon nods a few times. "Look, all I want to do is go around helping who I can, the sooner I start the more people I can help before I have to leave...do you really want to be the person standing between people getting the treatment they need or dying?"
All the women look at each other, before glancing at a data pad behind the counter.
"If this goes bad, you didn't get this from us," the woman says, handing him the data pad and returning to her work.
"I'm Horizon, it'll be fine, and thank you."
He takes a few steps away and begins scanning the list of patients in the hospital.
First by keywords, sorting for people with brain-related issues.
Then by Quirks, preferring people with those that heavily strain the mind.
"Mandalay, she's in worse condition than I thought," he says, reading her file and analyzing the scans they did after her massive concussion.
'Her Telepath Quirk is exactly the kind I want to get some hands-on time with. A chance to poke around with her brain is priceless, enough of that and maybe I'll figure myself out...'
He adds her to the queue, then begins sorting by age, and stage of illness.
After compiling the list, very heavily influenced by his own needs of course, he looks around to find a sign, needing some directions.
"Ahh, so the Maternity Ward is that way..."
Five minutes later and he's done with his snack, already at the other end of the hospital. Standing in front of a door with his next patient for the night.
Carefully and quietly opening the door, he sees a large window with a view of the city outside. The room was dimly lit as the sun will be rising soon, and in it is a woman.
Exhausted, completely asleep. And beside her bed is her baby, in a plastic box that helps him live.
Multiple tubes were attached to him just to keep him alive.
But as he approaches he can't help but feel bad for the boy.
Looking out the window and then back at the baby, he shakes his head, 'you wouldn't even be alive long enough to see one sunrise...don't worry, I'll fix that.'
And Horizon immediately gets to work.
The baby itself was born with an unidentified Quirk that caused abnormalities in the brain. Effectively making it braindead upon birth.
The hospital noted the potential cause as 'Neural Overload', which is as close as Horizon got to the exact problem that he's having with his brain trying to process all the new Quirks.
So this is his first of many attempts that simply will not work in helping him to understand his problem.
Because as Dr. Ujiko said, no sane person, and especially not Horizon, would ever consider the insanity of death being the answer.
He would instead bash his head against the wall over and over and never make any progress in solving the mystery of his own body.
One of the only things his Quirk couldn't detect or manipulate within himself, was the very instinctual nature of a person at an innate and primal level.
Within the hour, the woman wakes up to something she never imagined she'd experience.
Her son was crying, loudly, as if he were testing the limits of his lungs.
Her eyes shot open as she instinctually tried to get up, only to weakly prop herself up on her elbows, staring wide-eyed at Horizon who was cradling her crying son.
All the colliding thoughts made her freeze. She'd been unconscious since last night and was in labor during the fight.
She didn't know why Horizon was here, she didn't know about All Might.
She didn't know what he did, but none of it mattered.
She just started crying as he took a step toward her and gave her the baby.
Looking at her son through teary eyes she holds him closely, never wanting to let him go, enjoying the sound of him crying, like music to her ears.
"You don't have to worry, your baby will be perfectly healthy now," Horizon says, his voice barely reaching her as she is so focused on the baby. "Now it's just hungry, you can handle that..."
Horizon quietly makes his exit without her even noticing, and by the time he's already operating on his next patient, she finally comes to her senses and gets ready to feed her baby.
But looking toward the door she gets a confused expression on her face, recalling one strange thing, "it?"
---8 AM...
Finally done with the children Horizon is making his way toward the main treatment wing of the hospital.
Looking down at the data pad and carefully avoiding the light foot traffic in the halls he updates the last patient's information in it and opens up the file on his next patient.
'Shino Sosaki, Mandalay, multiple brain hemorrhages and concussions as well as swelling and inflammation...ouch, been there, not fun.'
But as he's passing by the final stretch, he stops abruptly in front of the large plastic window. Nearly spanning the entire room it allows people to peer into a nursery.
Filled with babies in their little beds, carefully wrapped up and sleeping peacefully.
The scene stops him dead in his tracks, and he can't help but take in every detail. It was oddly beautiful to him, all these babies ready to go home with their families.
All the little beds having nametags for the child and the parent's information. The parents' names were on top with the child below.
And almost all were filled with the names of three people.
One unfortunate soul only had one name on it, at the top, and that made his heart wrench.
"You'll be ok, but it probably won't be easy, trust me on that," he says in a sad and small voice.
For some reason this sight brought up all the lonely feelings he'd cast aside, buried in constant work and training, and yet he couldn't look away.
After staring at the room for over ten minutes, a familiar voice snaps him out of his daze, "are you ok?"
"Huh?" he snaps out of it and looks down to his right, seeing Pixie-Bob, or since she's not in costume, Ryuko, staring up at him.
Wearing the same outfit from last night with the right side of her head bandaged.
"I asked if you're ok, you've been standing here for a while."
"Oh, yeah, I'm perfect, what about you? And why are you in this area?"
She gives him a dazzling smile, "the nurses said it's ok if I help out with the babies, they usually need volunteers."
"Yeah, I should have guessed. Were you alright last night?"
"Yeah I was fine," she says, "the villains stopped attacking right after you arrived, guess they realized it was pointless to keep trying. Then more and more heroes kept showing up to help, and since they're all still outside I came in to get patched up...and check on Mandalay."
"Did one of them hit you?" Horizon asks, gesturing to her head.
"Oh, no, just before you came inside I might have tried to scan you, and well," she raises a hand to the side of her head to make an exploding motion, "pop, I guess we need to add you to the list of people we shouldn't use it on."
"Good call, hold still I can help," he slowly reaches up and rests a hand gently on the side of her head. She unconsciously closes her eyes and leans into his palm as a soothing sensation flows through the cuts and bruises on her head.
As he withdraws his hand she sees a glimpse of the blue energy on his palm before it dissipates, "wow, I can't even feel it anymore," she says while rubbing her head.
"Because it's as if it never existed, perfect regeneration."
"That explains why you survived those injuries, and do you still have the... you know," she gestures to her left eye.
"I grew it back."
"I'm glad to hear it," she frowns and looks away, clearly ashamed, "at least you didn't have to suffer that injury permanently from our failures at the camp."
"Is the public still being hard on you guys for that, even after knowing about All For One?"
She nods weakly, "not like we can use him as an excuse when only you even saw and fought him. But between failing to protect the students and getting injured ourselves. It doesn't matter that we aren't even a combat team, people are calling for us to retire?"
"Hmm, and will you?"
Ryuko looks around nervously, as if she were scared her teammates would hear her, "I...I'm going to. I haven't told anyone yet, not until everyone is healthy again. But I just don't want all of this anymore.
It's already hard enough to start a family with a good guy when the public is always following you around. But this kind of attention only makes it worse. I know some people still believe in us, but...I just want to be selfish for once..."
Horizon turns back to face the nursery and she follows his lead, "and you're worried that your friends won't like your choice?"
"Mhm."
"I don't think you'll need to worry about that, yeah this may destroy your team, but once they meet your kids they'll be happy for you, as if nothing ever happened. Plus I don't think they'll be mad at you for this in the first place."
"Yeah, we've been together for over te---a while now, I don't want anything coming between us. And I already know it could be a battle to get my kids to not want to be Pro Heroes since I was one and they'll be surrounded by them. It would only be worse if I don't retire before raising them."
"Well if last night taught us anything, it's that being a Pro and being a parent each takes time away from the other, something always has to be sacrificed..."
"Yeah, that's exactly what I'm afraid of, especially with that Nana Shimura and Shigaraki story being leaked."
"What?"
"Oh, you didn't know?" she gives him a confused look. "It's all over the news, did you not check your phone?"
"If you saw how many messages I have you'd understand."
"Yeah, you're pretty popular. But someone totally leaked all the ancestry of Shigaraki back to her with all the files and stuff, and by 'someone', we mean All For One."
"Trying to ruin All Might in any way he can, damn."
"That's not all, between the formal suit, and the full face mask, and the super powerful Quirk...people kind of think that All For One is yo---"
"My dad?"
She nods sheepishly. "Not many people, just a few idiots, you know how the internet is."
Horizon considers it for a moment, then just shrugs, "honestly, I can understand why they think that."
Ryuko just shakes her head at his dismissal of it, "yeah, I knew you were too nice to be raised by a monster like that."
"Exactly, and by the way, if Mandalay has any issues with you quitting, just tell her I said to get over it, she's about to owe me one."
Ryuko's eyes lit up, "are you gonna heal her?"
"Yeah, I just got done with the kids so time for the adults," he hands her the data pad, allowing her to scroll through what should be highly confidential files.
But he's been operating on people and children without asking permission all night, but of course nobody would have any issue with this.
Because as far as they know, he could just put the cancer back.
"Wow," she says while scrolling through the list. "You've done a lot already, but it really is only kids so far, how come?"
Horizon chuckles at that, "because adults I don't care for, but this," he gestures to the nursery. "Like little balls of infinite potential," his voice had a certain weight and conviction to it that stirred up something in Ryuko. "This is the closest we can get to magic, how was I supposed to start with anything but that?"
She gives him a dazzling smile, staring at him with hopeful eyes, "I didn't think you cared so much about...I mean, uh, I knew you cared of course, you're a hero after all. But...I didn't think you had such a soft spot for kids."
"Just until they start disappointing, that's usually what adults always do...or when they turn 7, at that point it's time to grow up and get your shit together," he shrugs.
Ryuko's smile drops as she sighs, feeling the wind knocked out of her sails, "you just had to ruin the moment, but I still think you're just a big softie."
"Think what you want woman, I've got work to do," she gives him back the data pad. "If you're here later I'll take you to lunch, until then, have fun at mom practice..."
---30 Minutes Later...
"Ugnh," Shino -Mandalay- stirs awake, feeling a searing pain in her head that quickly fades away. Opening her eyes she's immediately blinded by the sunlight streaming into the window, taking a moment to adjust before looking around.
She was in a hospital gown, in a hospital room, and standing beside her...Horizon.
"How are you feeling?" Horizon asks.
"Tired," she answers quietly.
"That's normal, what's the last thing you remember?"
She closes her eyes and tries to recall, "the summer camp, villains attacked, that damn villain hit me with a rock," she grumbles.
"Good good, that's the last thing that happened before you got knocked out."
She opens her eyes and looks up at him, "how is everyone?"
"We'll get to that later when Ryuko is here, for now, I just need you to stay calm for what I'm about to tell you, alright?"
She immediately tenses up, expecting the worse.
The 16-year-old side of Horizon shows itself as he smiles deviously below his visor, finally getting a chance to do this to someone.
"Shino...you've been asleep for 7 years," he lies effortlessly.
She freezes, then takes a few seconds to process what he said, then realization hits.
"WHAT?!"
END CHAPTER---